Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.

And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations - none of which I know how to work - information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.

[White House] feels even more like home now because you have all these memories that were formed watching your kids grow up.

I don't want ever to be a president who is comfortable and at ease with killing people.

For me, Lincoln is like just a handful of people - a Gandhi, or a Picasso, or a Martin Luther King Jr. - who is an original and captures something essential.

The world is less violent than it has ever been.

E.U. need to be nurtured and cultivated and protected and fought for because the achievements that we've seen on this continent, in contrast to a divided Europe of the previous century, are ones that remind us of how important it is that we work together.